Content Warning: This text deals with dark themes including suicide and features scenes of murder and sexual behavior. The source text also contains anti-LGBTQ+ bias, including anti-transgender bias.

The Dangers of Vanity and Ego is a major theme in Murder Your Employer, as everyone who fails in this novel does so because of this particular vice. Throughout the novel, the theme is reinforced by opposing examples being held in juxtaposition. The vain and egotistical villain is contrasted with the compassionate, altruistic murderer, making the villain’s deletion feel necessary while glorifying the concept of justice.

Fiedler, Helkampf, Kosta, and Underton are all deleted (though Underton is saved at the last minute) because their vanity draws them into a trap or into committing an act that is unwise. The predictability of this character trait allows others to manipulate their blind spots and trick them, like Fiedler putting the poison (actually the antidote) in Cliff’s cup or Helkampf walking himself down to the kilns where his body will disappear.

It isn’t only the villains who suffer from this character flaw, as Dean Harrow allows his vanity and ego to grow until he confidently breaks the rules in publishing Murder Your Employer and allows himself to be lured by his vanity into a similar fate as Helkampf.